telling the wrong story
I don’t exactly know where to start.
So I will start from where I am.
It is 2:47 p.m. I am sitting in the nook of my west-facing window, watching fat rain drops skydive from an overcast afternoon. It is the second-to-last Thursday of May. The grass is glowing – the kind of bright green that belongs in the Shire from The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
I have watched the mailman deliver today’s postal messages, the neighbor run in and out of his house for lunch break (he’s rather slow). I’ve watched lightning flash across the sky and the thunder echo quickly behind it. I’ve had three cups of coffee with spoonfuls of sugar that will probably give me diabetes sometime in the near future. I’ve watched the UPS man be the Santa Clause of ding-dong ditching and all the while, I have tried to begin a story I don’t entirely now how to tell.
I told God four months ago that as soon as He gave me a job, I would proclaim the story like a mad-woman on my blog, on twitter, on the book that has a face. God made me many things, none of which are quiet, which I love and appreciate and embrace. I told Him I would proclaim His goodness and His provision from the rooftops once He gave me a story about His goodness and when I could hold the provision in my hands.
I’m still waiting.
I’m still waiting because I’ve tried to tell the story backward. I’m still waiting because I wanted to become a storyteller once God gave me an ending, a resolution, a guarantee. But that’s the wrong story. The past four months I’ve been hoping and waiting to tell a story about deliverance, about provision, about guidance – not a story about the Deliverer, the Provider, the Shepherd. I’m finding that genuine faith chooses to believe God is and has always been the Deliverer and Provider and Shepherd – even when the promise of deliverance and provision seems, at the moment, like a cruel joke.
But I don't want to be a person who disbelieves God’s promises because of the presence of pain.
I know I joke a lot about marrying Tim Tebow and walking him through the woes of unemployment and having his beautiful missionary babies and blah blah blah blah blah. But I feel like Tim would give me a fist-bump on this one. To which, of course, I would reply, “I feel ya bro” (‘cause I’m swaggy like that).
But I saw this cartoon in the newspaper last week and loved it. Its purpose is to dig at Tim and scrutinize his faith in light of his recent unemployment and seemingly directionless future – but it's actually brilliant.
I will always keep this cartoon as a reminder that doing the will of God doesn’t involve the word ‘if’. Like sending your child to a mission field if and only if you have a guarantee they will be safe and return to you alive and in good health - instead of sending them in Joy because they have been called by God.
Likewise, proclaiming the goodness and character of God, for me in this moment, doesn’t involve the word ‘when’ – when I have a job worth talking about on next year’s Christmas card, when I finally make my parents happy with what I decide to do, or when I understand what God is doing.
I have no guarantees any of those things will ever happen. So I am learning to proclaim the goodness and character of God because HE IS. He is the great I AM. Because God is, my heart will rest because the character of God is enough.
This season for me has been a nightmarish blur, almost a drunken stupor of resolve. It’s been confusing and frustrating and I’ve felt like a puppet, moved along by the strings of other’s expectations – expected to play a certain role by the society and family puppet master. I believe anyone who is a recent grad (minus the medical/business fields) can relate to this. It’s heavy and cumbersome and feels like drowning two inches underwater. Like hope and disappointment volley the future back-and-forth during a Sunday afternoon tennis match.
It’s suffocating to be referred to in financial language – “an investment” that will hopefully “pay off” sooner rather than later. Newsflash: I am not a type of currency. What I need most are friends who are walking through the same thing; I need prayer, patience. I so desperately need space to work it out, freedom to follow where God leads, and time to be whatever it is God is asking me to be in this moment.
I don’t need an answer or life to get easier; I need the promises and character of God.
I don’t need relief from the pain and struggle; I need redemption despite the pain and struggle. I believe this is the exact message of the cross. The greatest act of redemption was worked out during and through the greatest period of pain.
I wanted to tell my story when it got easier, when I had a different perspective, preferably a perspective far, far away. But if I did that, I wouldn’t be telling a story worth reading. The story worth reading is the one that throws the ‘if’ and ‘when’ out the window. The story worth reading is the one that struggles and finds peace in the unknown.
The story worth reading is the one about the Deliverer, about the Provider – not about the deliverance or the provision. The story worth telling is the one about the unshakeable character of God – of Psalm 23, of the Lord my Shepherd.
The story worth telling and the story worth reading at the same: God is always leading, simply because of who He is, and despite what the world may believe, I am being led and therefore, I am not lost.
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